by Michelle Wan
> Right. My next question is, what would drive this person to seek a victim at regular intervals? The dates of all these incidents are roughly four to five years apart. <
> Hoo boy. You don’t want much, do you? At a guess, and this is no more than a guess, I’d say any situation that causes the demons to rise, say an adverse life change or some sort of personal crisis. On the other hand, it might be as simple as noncompliance with medications. Say we’re dealing with a severely paranoid individual on antipsychotic drugs who quits taking his Thorazine every so often and starts hearing voices. It could also be something that moves this person periodically out of circulation. Say a series of prison sentences or a history of repeat psychiatric hospital stays. Then again, maybe he simply goes by an inner clock. However, the real question for me, Mara, is not the timing, but what makes a serial killer in the first place. Is it simply hard-wiring? Some kind of significant precipitating conditions? A combination of both? Answer that question, kid, and you could make psychiatric history. <
It was something to go on, Mara reflected as she read Patsy’s reply. Except how did she set about commandeering the incarceration and release records of every person who’d served time in a French jail since 1984, or the admission-discharge information of psychiatric patients? She doubted Loulou would be willing or even able to twist arms to help her. And what about Patsy’s question. Was the killer she sought triggered by cyclical events? Or was he driven by an inner impulse, like a spring wound tighter and tighter until it caused the mechanism it governed to burst apart?
•
Paul gave out the photocopies of the pigeonnier. Like Gaston, he did not mention Mara’s money incentive. He did not see his father until the following week, when he and Mado went to the family farm outside Issigeac for Sunday lunch. His uncle Emile and Sylvie, Emile’s wife, were also there.
Paul’s mother had prepared a haunch of Quercy lamb, lightly rubbed with garlic and so tender it made one sigh. They had, in addition, fennel in cream sauce with pan-roasted potatoes, a compote of prunes, a plate of local cheeses, and a Savoy cake, light and moist as only Tante Sylvie, a Savoyarde from Bonneville, could make it. The wine was a robust red from the family’s own vineyard. Fresh figs finished off the meal. Paul’s mother believed, for reasons of her own, that figs would help Mado to conceive.
“By the way,” Paul said as the women cleared the table for coffee and Armagnac. He pulled out a crumpled copy of the dovecote photo and handed it across to his father and uncle. “Does this look familiar?”
His father adjusted his glasses, smoothed out the paper, and peered at it. “It’s a pigeon house,” he said finally, handing it on to Emile.
“Right,” said his brother, who suffered from a left-veering amblyopia.
“I mean,” said Paul, “do you know it?”
Uncle Emile, bad eye wandering up the chimney, reached for a toothpick. “Sure.”
“You do?” Paul sat forward. “This very one?”
“Well, maybe not this very one. Zut! You can stand on a hilltop and see half a dozen like it any day.”
“Not so much around here, though,” said Paul’s father.
“What’s wrong with around here?” asked Paul.
“Well, they didn’t go in for pigeons as much. Pigeons eat too much grain.”
“And the roof of this one is different,” offered Uncle Emile.
“How so?”
“It’s made with lauzes. Around here it’s mostly tile.”
“What’s so special about this one, anyway?” Paul’s father tapped the photocopy.
“Nothing,” said his son, “but if you can locate it, there’s money in it.”
Father and uncle looked interested for the first time. “How much?” they asked together.
“One thousand euros. Split two ways, five hundred for me, five hundred for whoever can tell me where to find it.”
“One thousand euros.” Uncle Emile screwed up his face in the effort of converting currencies. He still thought in francs, would never get used to euros. “Bigre! That’s almost seven thousand francs.”
Both older men looked more carefully at the photocopy.
“Where do you come in?” asked the father after a while.
“Brokerage fee,” grinned the son, leaning back in his chair, content for the moment to digest his excellent meal.
•
Slowly breasting the hill, the ancient wood-paneled truck came to a groaning, fumy halt at the summit. The young German hitchhiker ran forward gladly, swinging his rucksack onto his back.
“Sarlat?” he inquired with a broad smile, naming his destination to the driver.
The driver, a farmer in a shapeless, broad-brimmed hat, barely glanced at the hitchhiker, gave a grunt and a nod, and signaled with a thumb for the young man to climb onto the bed of the truck.
“Danke! Merci!” the youth shouted. He trotted back and hoisted himself lightly up over the tailgate.
The vehicle revved up with a shuddering jerk, moved forward, and gathered speed on the downhill run. The German, whose name was Hans, slipped off his pack and lowered himself beside it, squeezing down onto the floor of the truck bed between a stack of empty crates and an assortment of muddy tires and dented milk cans. On the other side of the crates was a heap of dirty sacking. A thin, good-looking youth traveling auto-stop through France for the first time, Hans had been lucky. From Carcassonne, two rides in swift succession had brought him this far. He calculated that this lift would bring him to Sarlat within the hour. He leaned back against the wooden slats of the side frame, stretching his long legs out before him, and congratulated himself on his good fortune. With the heel of his boot he shoved one of the crates aside to make more space. The sacking next to it moved. Hans was startled to see that he was not alone. A hand flapped in the air, as if driving away flies. Then the sacking sat up. Hans saw a flat, misshapen face perched neckless on a massive pair of shoulders. One eye was obscured by a dark lens. The other glared at him balefully.
“Bitte,” said Hans faintly, forgetting momentarily what little French he knew. The uncovered eye continued to fix him unpleasantly.
“I go to Sarlat.” Hans struggled. “You go also to Sarlat?”
The face gave no indication of intelligent reception.
Hans smiled weakly. Nervously, he dug into his rucksack for his guidebook and made a great display of poring through it. Sarlat-la-Canéda, the German text informed him, boasted some of the finest examples of medieval secular architecture in the Dordogne. The town had grown up around a ninth-century Benedictine abbey. The thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries were the golden age for Sarlat, which waxed in importance as a market town. But the Hundred Years’ War left it weakened and depopulated.
Hans stole a nervous glance at his companion, who had not left off staring at him in a way that made the young German increasingly uncomfortable. It was at this point that Hans realized that they had left the main highway and were bouncing crazily over a dirt road, headed in a westerly direction, trailing a plume of dust behind them.
“Hey, wait a minute,” he shouted in German. “Stop! Where are you going?”
If anything, the truck picked up speed. With difficulty, he stood up, steadying himself against the side rail, and worked his way forward. In order to reach the cab, he had to step over the legs of his fellow passenger.
“Bitte,” he said again and banged with his fist on the metal roof. “Halt!” The wind cut at his blond hair as he stood swaying with the side-to-side motion of the vehicle. “Stopp! Stopp!” The landscape of Black Périgord, which he had so recently been prepared to admire, flew past him, wild and unfriendly. Then the truck took a sudden turn that sent him sprawling over the other man, upsetting the crates, which, being loosely stacked, went spinning against the tailgate. The patch-eyed man, with intentional malevolence, seized the hapless German by the collar and shoved him backward with a force sufficient to land him winded against the opposite side of the bed.
&nb
sp; “Hey!” shouted Hans, terrified but prepared to defend himself. “What did you do that for?”
For answer, Vrac gave only a hoarse, unpleasant laugh.
Hans took in the size of the man’s hands and the fact that they were now jolting through alien forest over a deeply rutted road. Tall trees rose up gloomily all around. Mutely, he sank to the floor of the truck bed.
After what seemed like an interminable time to the young German, the truck came to a rocking halt. The cab door slammed, and the driver got out and came to the back.
“Listen.” Hans rose to his feet and stopped. He now perceived that the driver was not a man but a woman, but that did not improve his situation. Seen full-on, hat pushed back, her aspect, with its gargoyle features and a purple mark over one eye, was enough to make his mouth go dry.
“Wh-what do you want?”
“Cash.” La Binette held out a blackened hand as hard and horny as a hoof. She never took traveler’s checks or credit cards.
“Haven’t got any,” Hans squeaked, which was near enough to the truth.
“Your wallet,” la Binette demanded.
“I give you money, and then what?” he demanded spiritedly in his rudimentary French.
Again, Vrac gave a loud, braying laugh. “Give!” he roared, rising to his feet.
Frightened though he was, Hans was a quick thinker. Also a fast sprinter.
“All right,” he said and picked up his pack as if to comply. In one fluid motion, he leaped over the opposite side rail and was off through the trees, running like a hare.
Vrac gave a tardy bellow and lumbered forward.
“Leave it,” snarled the mother. The German was already lost to view. With a stoical grunt, la Binette climbed back into the cab, turned the truck around, and set off in the direction they had come. Vrac lay down again and resumed his nap. His mother drove until they rejoined the D703. She turned onto it and proceeded slowly west. At this time of year there wasn’t much traffic, and fewer hitchhikers. From June on, she knew things would improve.
EIGHT
She stood still, her heart pounding. Once again she heard the sounds, a soft rustling in the undergrowth, the snap of a twig.
“Who’s there?” she called. And turned, staring wildly about her.
From the dark shadow of the forest there came only breathless silence.
Panicked, she groped for a stick, a rock, anything with which to defend herself. Then she glimpsed it moving behind the screen of trees. Slowly it broke into view, coming on her with an implacable tread. In horror, Mara saw for the first time the large, shapeless thing that had been behind her, the creature through whose hungry eyes she had watched her sister on the forest path. Desperate to buy escape for Bedie, Mara did the only thing she could do. Shouting an inarticulate challenge, she ran straight at it.
•
She awoke with a thundering in her head. A dream, she told herself. It was only a dream. Abruptly, she sat up in the darkness, breathing hard.
And then she froze in terror. It had been no dream. There was something in the room with her, a black, featureless form standing motionless at the foot of her bed. She opened her mouth to scream. Nothing but a strangled whimper came out. As she cowered there helplessly, the thing raised its arms, and she saw in that awful moment that it had no head. In a rush it was on her, enveloping her in a sudden, suffocating wave of red.
Mara lay facedown, drenched in sweat, heart hammering in her chest. The blankets were twisted around her legs. Gradually, familiar sounds reached her. Jazz’s light snoring beside her on the bed. The early-morning sound of birds. She raised her head. Gray, misty dawn filled her window.
With a sob, she stumbled out into the cold, damp air, ran barefoot across the wet grass, fumbled with the latch of her studio door. Once inside, she switched on her computer with trembling fingers, dialed up and pounded out her electronic cry for help.
> … My god, Patsy, what does it mean? Why headless, why red, and why now, after all these years? <
•
Patsy Reicher opened Mara’s e-mail hours later, at the start of her day by New York time. She ran her fingers through her crazy gray-red mop of hair. Thoughtfully, she moved a wad of gum from one side of her mouth to the other. The air in her office was stale. She got up from her desk, shoved open a window. The smell of the day, the grind of traffic, a sudden blare of car horns reached her from the street below. She returned to her desk and tapped out a response:
> Calm down, Mara. Headless because so far he’s faceless. Red? Well, he ain’t Santa. Try red for danger, red for predator. Hunters always wear red, don’t they? And why now? Because you’ve got new information, you’re processing it, and you’re beginning to believe that things are finally breaking open on Bedie. Maybe they are. Go carefully, kiddo. You may not like what you find. <
She was at his door again, sweeping past in a rush of air, taking possession of his front room. “Julian, we need to make a start.”
“Eh? What are you talking about?”
It was nine o’clock on a Friday evening. Mara’s knock had jerked him out of an armchair doze, dog-tired as he was from a day of heavy labor. He had been assisted in this enterprise by his neighbor’s grandson, Bernard, whom he employed casually, partly because Madame Léon was a lovely old girl, partly because he valued fresh eggs, and partly because Bernard was the closest thing Julian had to a bulldozer. He really didn’t want to deal with Mara.
“Our search for the orchids. And the pigeonnier.” She was depositing an assortment of maps on his dining table.
Christ! There it was again, this coming at him blind-side. Julian shook himself awake. He needed to take control of the situation.
“Look here, Mara, you simply have no idea what you’re asking. Do you know how much area we’d have to cover? On foot and bending from the waist?”
She paused, clearly lacking the faintest notion of the enormity of her demand. “Why bending from the waist?”
“Because, dammit, terrestrial orchids aren’t that bloody easy to see! They grow in tall grass and among other plants. They’re widely scattered. Anyway, I already told you, you’re looking for a specific place that might never have existed, where a certain sequence of flora grew. Nearly twenty years ago. It could have been plowed up, grazed over, or wiped out by herbicides. Or simply buried under a meter of cement!”
She was taken aback by his vehemence. “But you agreed to help me. I can’t do it alone. You know the terrain. You’ve got the field notes.”
“Okay. Sure. But I’m telling you, it’s not that bleeding easy.”
“Right.” She raised her hands, palms forward. “That’s where I thought the pigeonnier would come in. I’ve worked out a system. We’ll look for it first, as our main point of reference, you see? Once we find it, we can use the orchids to work from there.”
“If we find it, don’t you mean? Don’t forget, Paul, Gaston and god knows who else have been looking. So have you, so have I—”
“Well, I’ve just figured out a way of making the job easier,” she announced, waving at the maps. “The Série bleue. I got one for every section of the Dordogne and including the western part of Quercy. They show everything. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner.”
Julian was fully familiar with the Série bleue maps. They were a necessity to someone like him, whose customers resided on isolated hilltops, in the hidden folds of valleys, and down unmarked lanes. The maps, on a scale of one centimeter to 250 meters, and based on National Geographical Institute surveys, depicted not only contour lines, geological features, land use, and types of vegetative cover, but every road, every footpath, every man-made structure on the landscape. He could, for example, pick out his own cottage—fifth dot on the right on the road going west out of Grissac. But it was difficult to say, unless you knew beforehand, what was what.
“Look,” he pointed out, “they show everything, sure, but these maps aren’t foolproof. Or what if the pigeonnier we’re looking for n
o longer exists? Besides, on paper, buildings show up only as black dots. Things aren’t labeled ‘house’ or ‘barn,’ you know. How will you be able to tell a dovecote from a—a pigsty or a cabane?”
“Simple. The pigeonnier we’re looking for is in the middle of a field, away from other buildings. All we have to do is look for isolated dots in the middle of open spaces.”
“All we have to do—? Mara, there must be thousands of isolated dots in the middle of open spaces all over the Dordogne. Are we going to check out every one of them?”
“Listen,” she said, a flinty edge coming into her voice, “we had a deal. You got your photographs. Now help me find my sister. Or at least the path she walked before she disappeared.”
He gave in. In a perverse sort of way, he was even relieved that she had kick-started the process. He had been sitting on the fence for days, wondering how to deal with her, what to do about the Lady’s Slipper, wanting it but knowing it to be impossible. Now she had given him a possible means to resolve both issues. But he’d have to work fast. Orchids had a limited flowering season. It was already coming on to early May. It had been a hot, wet spring, with early flowering, meaning that many of the specimens captured in the film would not be much longer in evidence. Using the maps to identify possible pigeonniers made sense. At least it shortened the odds.
“All right,” he said. “Give me a couple of days. I’ll see what I can do.”
•
Thus, Julian found himself spending his Saturday afternoon after rugby (Grissac won for a change, twenty-three to fifteen, in their “friendly” game against La Grotte) at home, instead of celebrating at Chez Nous in the company of teammates. Forgoing Mado’s mouth-watering veal pie, he settled down at his kitchen table with the photographs and a solitary, sorry lunch of tinned cassoulet, washed down by quite a bit of wine.